Quanassee Town and the Spikebuck Mound

Quanassee Town and the Spikebuck Mound. . , In 1700, this area was home to a thriving Cherokee community called Quanassee. The heart of the village was a townhouse, a combined civic center, council house, and temple that was located atop the mound (today called the Spikebuck Mound) that stands on the bank of the Hiwassee River. Adjacent to the townhouse was an open plaza for ceremonies, dances and games. Individual homes ringed the plaza, and each family maintained a circular winter house and a rectangular summer house, with a small corn house or two. Surrounding the town were orchards, gardens, and fields of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, tobacco and other crops, a half acre for each person in the village., Archaeological evidence indicates that Quanassee was a substantial settlement as early as 1500, and most of Spikebuck mound was constructed before the first English explorers came to the area in the 1690s. In 1716, South Carolina officials met with Cherokee leaders at Quanassee to secure Cherokee alliance in the Yamassee War, and in 1717, South Carolina established a public trading "factory" (store and warehouse) at Quanassee, on the main route between Carolina and the Overhill Cherokee towns in Tennessee. That "factory" supplied the region with English manufactured goods in exchange for deerskins and other Cherokee commodities., Quanassee was among smallest Cherokee towns, with only 104 people (37 men, 31 women, and 36 children) in 1721. Threat of attack during the Creek-Cherokee War (ca. 1716-1752) drove many townspeople into more secure settlements; in 1725, a Coosa (Creek) war party destroyed Quanassee, and killed or enslaved most of its inhabitants. The settlement was defunct for many years, but a new community established at Quanassee prior to the American Revolution. In 1776 American forces "campt at Quannasy Town on hywasey" before razing the Cherokee Valley Towns. Benjamin Hawkins, passing through the area in 1797, saw "on the left bank of this was the town of Quannasee, for many years the residence of Cornelius Daughterty, an old Irish trader; at present there is nothing remaining of the old town except the open flats where were formerly the corn fields....", (Captions) , This 1725 map indicates "Quenesee an English Factory" near the headwaters of the "Euphasee" (Hiwasses) River., Like most Cherokee villages in the early 1700s, Quenassee had a large townhouse with an adjacent plaza as the community center, surrounded by family compounds with paired winter and summerhouses., View of the site of Quanassee and the Spikebuck Mound, 1966. The site is now preserved and protected by the city of Hayesville and the Archaeological Conservancy.